


Disarmed

by yumekuimono



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Inspired By Tumblr, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Slash, Self-Defense, author had a conniption and needed to write fic as a result, imagine tony and bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 14:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11853567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yumekuimono/pseuds/yumekuimono
Summary: Bucky teaches Tony how to correctly disarm someone with a gun.





	Disarmed

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by an unanswered prompt over at [Imagine Tony & Bucky](http://imaginetonyandbucky.tumblr.com): Imagine Bucky seeing the footage from the time Tony disarmed him during CW and it kinda turned him on. (Or alternatively, watching Tony handling weapons give Bucky the hots)
> 
> this is nothing like that

“Wait.” Bucky speaks suddenly, before he even realizes he means to. He blinks, but figures he might as well continue. “Go back a bit,” he requests, and FRIDAY rewinds the tape he’s watching. “Little more. There, play from there.”

On screen, security footage from the GSG9 headquarters shows Tony Stark confronting the Winter Soldier with only a palm repulsor that was hidden inside his watch.

“Play it again.”

“Buck?” Steve asks, looking at him in concern, but he only holds up his hand, watching the encounter play out intently. When he speaks, it’s to address the AI again.

“Can you slow it down a bunch?”

Obligingly, the footage rewinds and then inches by a few frames at a time.

“Oh my god,” Bucky whispers. “Oh my god, did I hit his sunglasses?”

“Bucky?” Steve asks again. “What’s wrong?”

He stands abruptly, throwing Steve no more than a cursory glance. “Sorry. I need to take a break. I’ll be back in a while.”

“Okay…” Steve sounds worried, but lets him go.

Bucky is not at all ashamed of taking advantage of Steve’s enormous soft spot when it comes to him. Honestly, he’d been okay with it in the days after he’d been unfrozen again, when he’d been overwhelmed by trying to erase his conditioning and untangle his memories with the help of Tony’s BARF technology and he’d barely been able to cope with taking care of himself. Then, it had been a relief to know that Steve would undoubtedly fight in Bucky’s corner to defend him from any and all politicians or press that wanted to accuse him. Now that he’s doing better, though, Steve’s self-appointed role as guardian of Bucky’s boundaries, even from Bucky himself, is starting to grate. He’d had to insist half a dozen times that it would be fine to get Steve to agree to let him review the material that is going in his own damn dossier.

Honestly, if Steve is going to fret over Bucky wanting to influence the arguments that will hopefully convince the world governments that the actions of the Winter Soldier really aren’t his fault, and _then_ fret over Bucky wanting to take a break from reviewing footage that is, admittedly, frequently stomach-churning, he deserves to be taken advantage of.

Bucky stomps down from the viewing room into the workshop.

“Stark. Give me a pistol.”

Tony startles, snapping out of his work zone. “What? You’re not supposed to have them still.”

It’s one of the conditions that allowed them to bring Bucky stateside. Technically, he isn’t supposed to have any weapons at all, but Natasha had secretly slipped him a couple of knives because she understands.

He rolls his eyes. “Something gun-shaped, then. Doesn’t have to be functional.”

Tony considers, then rolls his chair across the floor to a storage bin and digs out an old handgrip prototype. The thing can be loaded with a clip and has both trigger and finger guard, but there’s no firing mechanism and only the most rudimentary of barrels. He hands it over.

Bucky double checks that the gun is disabled and unloaded, and then he levels it at Tony’s chest. “Right. Now take it away from me.”

Tony’s heart kicks up to triple-time as a shock of adrenaline hits his system. He’s been working on moving past his anger towards Barnes. He knows now that the man was a victim, that his parents’ deaths are on HYDRA’s hands. That’s why he fought so hard to get him the BARF, and why he offered to build a new arm. But right now, with a gun and a deadly glare pointed at him, it’s hard not to see the terrifying enemy Barnes was all those months ago. He barely notices the watch repulsor unfold in an automatic response to his distress.

“What?” Tony croaks.

“Take the gun away from me,” Bucky says patiently.

Tony stands, and reaches up to grasp the barrel.

“ _No_.”

He flinches as if the forceful tone of Barnes’ voice had been a gunshot.

“If this had been combat, I would have shot you already.” In the middle of a battle, with fear and adrenaline and chaos working against him, Bucky could understand Tony’s response; but if this is how he approaches disarming someone when he has all the time in the world to react? Bucky’s got no clue what Howard was doing, raising Tony to take over a weapons manufacturing empire without teaching him basic gun safety. “First rule of disarming someone: don’t get shot. Step to the side.”

Tony’s brow furrows as if he wants to argue. Internally, Bucky rolls his eyes. It would be just like Tony to protest because he’s worried about collateral damage to whoever might be standing behind him. Fortunately, he doesn’t say anything, and even better, he knows to step to the outside of Bucky’s extended arm.

Bucky nods. “Now turn and grab the back of the gun with your left hand. Jam your fingers in front of where the hammer would be. It might hurt, but not as much as getting shot.”

Tony follows directions. It’s good advice; blocking the hammer will prevent the gun from firing, even if the trigger’s been pulled. He still has no clue why the hell Barnes has taken it upon himself to apparently teach him this.

“ _Now_ grab the front of the barrel. Twist it away from you and around towards my body.”

Tony finds himself abruptly holding on to the prototype. Barnes’ expression shifts into what might be a smile on anyone else, and he holds out his hand. Tony doesn’t give him back the gun, though, instead opting to stare suspiciously.

“No offense, Robocop, but why are we doing this?”

Bucky presses his lips together and looks away. “FRIDAY, is it possible to play the footage I was just watching down here?”

“Certainly, Sgt. Barnes.”

A video window pops up on one of the holoscreens, already looping the segment that Bucky had been rewatching. Tony blinks at it, frowns.

“So…what? You didn’t like my style?”

Bucky stares at him. He cannot believe this man sometimes, but usually that statement is accompanied by less exasperation and more being awestruck. “You put your _hand_ in front of the _barrel_ , Stark.”

Tony holds up his hand, still covered by the repulsor, and wiggles his fingers. “Yeah, but I had one of these on.”

“And what if you hadn’t? What happens if you get caught without it one day?”

“I won’t.” Tony knows he won’t because he always wears the watch now.

Things are tense in the Facility. He might be working towards forgiving Barnes, but outside of their regularly scheduled workshop meetings, he avoids the man. Partly because it’s awkward and he doesn’t really know how Barnes feels about him, but mostly because he’s pretty much glued to Steve’s side. And Steve…Steve, Tony still has nightmares about. Steve and his team he fought to bring to the table on the new Accords and he fought to bring them home, but he has not completely forgiven them. (They’re here because deep down, Tony still knows that something is coming—and they’re going to need all the help they can get.)

“You can’t know that! You get into the habit of grabbing guns like that, the one day you don’t have your protection, you’re gonna get shot, and if you’re _lucky_ that bullet’s not gonna be pointed at your face. Hell, I already hit your sunglasses.”

Tony is not at all sure how to respond to that, so he says, “You didn’t, actually. Hit my glasses. It looks like that in the footage, but the bullet didn’t make it past the barrel.”

Bucky cannot even be relieved that he didn’t hit Tony. “That’s not the _point_. What if it had damaged your repulsor?”

“I was 98.9 percent certain that wouldn’t happen,” Tony hedges.

“And if it _had_? What happens when your repulsors fail?”

He resists the urge to say they never fail, because he might be a genius engineer but part of that is knowing that things _always_ fail. “It…wouldn’t have exploded. Probably.”

Bucky grits his teeth. Honestly, it’s like Tony has never had someone care about his safety before. “Probably.”

Tony nods. He’s still a little confused by this whole thing. “Most likely.”

Bucky holds out his hand for the gun prototype. “Do it again.”

Tony hands the gun back and lets Barnes make him repeat the motions over and over, retracting the watch repulsor while he’s at it. Somehow, he doesn’t feel like he came out on top of that conversation. He feels off-balance, like he still needs to defend himself. Before he can really think about it, he finds himself saying, “Even if I did damage my repulsor—which, there’s only a one-point-one percent chance of that happening—there’s enough mass in there that a bullet wouldn’t exit my hand with enough force to kill me afterwards.”

Bucky shakes his head, bringing his left hand up to brace the butt of the gun. The motions are exactly the same, but Tony needs to learn not to let the different grip throw him off. “Not acceptable.”

Tony fakes a bright grin. “Worried about me?”

“Yes.”

That gives him more of a pause than Barnes adding in his other hand had, but fortunately at this point the motions of repeatedly disarming him have become almost automatic. “I know,” he says faux-sympathetically, “if I get my hand shot, there’s no one to fix up your arm anymore.”

Bucky is silent for a while after that as they work, wondering what the hell he’s going to do with this man in front of him. He makes Tony disarm him on the opposite side, switching his grip every couple of repetitions. He knows Tony avoids him, but Bucky doesn’t avoid him in return, not anymore. He sees the new lines in Tony’s face every time they have another session. He sees how he works his fingers to the bone on Bucky’s arm, on Rhodes’ leg braces, on Spider-man’s suit, on keeping them all safe and free. He sees that Tony is very much not okay but he keeps going anyway, and Bucky tells himself that it is possible. That he can do it too. He doesn’t understand how no one else seems to notice that what Tony does is extraordinary. He doesn’t understand how anyone can take him for granted.

Finally he says quietly, “You love building things.”

Tony drops his hands from where they were raised to take the gun again, staring.

Bucky lowers his arm. “I don’t want you to get shot because then you wouldn’t be able to do what you love.”

Tony has never, in his life, been told to make things for the joy of making them. Make yourself useful, yes. Make profit. Make things so the Avengers will stick around because he’s not a hero and he’s not a team player but he sure as hell can make fancy toys to take out the bad guys. Make things because people want them from you, and if you keep doing it for long enough, they start to expect them from you. Except the truth is, Tony does love it. He loves pushing the limits of possibility. He loves creation, he loves knowledge. He’s resigned himself to giving what he makes to those who will never truly appreciate them. And now there is this man who wants nothing from him except for Tony’s own safety and possibly his continued happiness.

Bucky sets the gun prototype down on a table. “Practice what I showed you. Until you can do it automatically no matter what. Natasha will help.” He turns to leave, then pauses. Sucking up his courage, he says, “I care about you.”

Tony stands there alone in the middle of his workshop long after Bucky has gone, utterly disarmed.

**Author's Note:**

> this is, in fact, how I was taught to take a gun away from someone in my karate/self-defense class. I was understandably very upset when I saw that scene in the movie. basically, Bucky is me in this fic
> 
> join me on [the Tumblr](http://yumekuimono.tumblr.com)


End file.
